Okay. Home schooling is going somewhat better than the last time I updated. Somehow my mother managed to convince Munchkin that if she kept whining her mummy would eventually lose it and decamp for Mexico, or something. I don't know. There's less whining. I'm happy.
Also, I feel that we're over the hump because we're past page 100 of Hay-Wingo. It's 120 pages. She reads words, such as "decide" and "Jupiter" and "papoose." Also "squaw." That one is maybe not ideal. I recognise that it can't be all that easy to think of words to demonstrate a certain vowel sound, but surely "squaw" should not make the cut if "straw" does not. It's still better than Webster's Speller ("smut," "slut," etc.).
I do not like reading home schooling blogs. The mothers are always doing crafts. Really horrible crafts, like paper mache. I don't even like paste. We don't even _own_ paste!
In fact, home schooling blogs seem to fall into three broad groups:
1. People who do lots of projects and crafts and crafts and projects and probably use Pinterest a lot.
2. People who live charmingly picturesque lives, unschool, and post pictures of their children with perfect lighting gathering eggs and learning About Life before they all gather together around the fire to listen to Charlotte's Web.
3. People who are home schooling because of religious (generally) or philosophical (less common) reasons but are completely overwhelmed. Anyone else would have cried uncle, but since their primary purpose is to avoid institutional schooling, these bloggers instead justify that their kids are at least not getting shot, and they're sure they're learning many important things somewhere in-between the thousands of crises affecting the family.
I never do crafts. We don't own chickens, and if we did, my children would be less likely to lovingly gather their eggs than to chase them around until they caught one and then try to kiss it. That only leaves the unenviable #3 category, except I'm not _that_ religious or principled.
I was reading one of those "perfect lighting with perfect children and a perfect life" homeschooling blogs the other day and I thought of how happy it makes me that you are so damn candid about how this is not all sunshine and artifully placed lens flares.
ReplyDeleteI am considering homeschooling if we can financially afford to once our children are school age, mostly because SOuth Carolina's public schools are... sort of famously terrible... and the private schools nearby are a somewhat creepy "Nobody knows where electricity comes from because to say we do smacks too much of evil science" brand of Christianity I do not subscribe to.
And hey, I went to school with a lot of kids who had trouble with the word "island" in FIFTH GRADE, so you can always think of it that way. When things get tough, remember that your children will be able to read that word without pronouncing it "is - land" when they're eleven.
"I do not like reading home schooling blogs. The mothers are always doing crafts. Really horrible crafts, like paper mache. I don't even like paste. We don't even _own_ paste!"
ReplyDeleteI swear I have written this very post before. Oh my word can I tell you how much I loathe crafting? hate. despise.
you don't need paste to do papier-mache. you can make it with just flour and water, if you want, though diluted glue works better. (not so dusty later.)
ReplyDeleteI always want to papier-mache with my kids, but they are all fastidious. I push them enthusiastically to the bowl of goo, showing them how it's done, and they give me looks of distaste. "It's all icky."